Author’s note: I have forgone the usual reviewing format to write a more personal piece. I saw it as simply the only way to come to terms with the experience I had with Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) when I watched it for the first time. Therefore, although there will be some critical analysis of the film’s text, it is not the focus here. Rather, the purpose of this essay is merely to reflect, to attempt a self-analysis of response, and to ruminate on the possible implications of such. In other words, this is a short essay about watching film.
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths…
– Robert Frost, “For Once, Then, Something”
Any person that is serious about film, or at least about watching it, will be able to tell you of a watershed moment they’ve experienced. These are moments of immense proportion, when the illusive formation of images on screen seemingly expands or, rather, gives way to a profound and terrible existential crisis. As if awakened from a deep sleep, we suddenly find ourselves “beyond the picture”: transformed by an understanding of what cinema is and what it can be. These moments can be rapturous and instant or quiet and solidifying. They may divulge a broader form of wisdom to the individual, as we find our perspectives on truth, love, and sacrifice being altered without our consent.
Andrei Tarkovsky once wrote, “[Art is] an unconscious act that nonetheless reflects the true meaning of life.” To discover what is true can be dangerous; it can threaten the stability of our existence by disrupting our previous conceptions and lead us to somewhere we may not necessarily enjoy, but we must have faith in the process. There is another danger, however, that in searching out such an epiphany one may find themselves within the realm of falsity.
The title of this piece refers to a poem by Robert Frost, whose narrator sought such meaning at the bottom of a well — a fleeting moment of rushed hopefulness that for once there was a chance at truth in the path we have chosen — only to be preoccupied by a pebble of quartz. I have become acquainted with the plight of the narrator. The inky depths of his well give way to the reflective black of the screen that I commit myself to for endless hours, searching for something, however fleeting. It may be slight and it may not necessarily be original, but it would be mine. A recent viewing of Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg stirred something in me that felt promising.
“I would have died for him. So why aren’t I dead?” So lilts Catherine Deneuve’s Geneviève, pregnant and separated from her young lover, Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), who has been drafted into the Algerian War. They’ve promised each other that they would wait, but times are desperate. Geneviève’s mother has financial problems and a charming suitor named Roland (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy’s debut film Lola) is ready to take responsibility for the unborn child, while Guy’s letters are detached and infrequent. The melody slows and the key shifts in a reprise of Michel Legrand’s infinitely tragic love theme, bringing Geneviève’s emotional distress into focus. The music that initially adorned the lovers’ bliss is now just as present in their heartbreak. Demy sought to create worlds within his films, ones that ring with the truth of our own. Frost once declared: “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” So must Geneviève and Guy. Time is unyielding to even the greatest of passions, as cruel as it seems.
At this moment an aggressive sense of self came from beyond the picture. I felt lighter, as if something confronted by something I had known all along. But as I tried to grasp it the film moved on, unaware of its immense impact on me. Or perhaps, it was aware, but continued because it must. Chris Marker, a companion to Demy in the French Left Bank, philosophized in Sans Soleil (1983):
Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything – except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied.
He speaks on behalf of Demy’s lovers, and lovers everywhere, who have been scorned, beaten, or forgotten by life.
What was it that I saw here? It would be easy enough to heap praise onto the film for how it defies genre convention, for its ceaseless sympathy to its characters without condescension and melodrama, or for its boutique aesthetic design and elegant transfiguration of the cinematic space. Yet, I feel this is a disservice to such a masterful vision — one that dresses up life’s hardest facts in pink tissue paper and chocolate box simplicity not in an attempt to cushion the blow, but to bleed it out. I found it to be a direct attack on any form of the 21st century cynicism that I imagined within myself. Surely, had I watched the film a year ago, maybe less, I would have decried its sincerity as a exercise in self-parody. So what is it now that brought out such a reaction? Had I changed? I mentioned that I felt as if I had been confronted by something I was aware of all along; perhaps the truth that I was looking for was not in the judgments of Demy and Frost or the pastel colours of Cherbourg, but in myself. I find myself unsatisfied with any answer. Have I pursued something in an attempt to merely pursue it? Is this my own pebble of quartz? Is my own search for something tangible being offset by self-doubt and uncertainty?
To those who have continued to read through this piece to its conclusion: thank you. I realize now that I haven’t said much, but I suppose, like Frost, I’m not sure if there is anything to be said. Eventually, looking “beyond the picture” into life and into art may reveal something truer than just the white glint from a pebble. For a moment, as Demy fades out over a family playing in the snow, I thought I might have found it, but now I am unsure. Perhaps it is not a moment of instantaneous euphoria; perhaps it comes later. Demy himself suggests as much as he clings to the final crescendo long after the scene has faded out, leaving his characters to their respective, separate lives. Suddenly, I found myself staring into my reflection in the inky blacks of the screen, trying to look through it, beyond it, desperately clinging to something that has no answer.
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths — and then I lost it.
